Shadow-Blade Mark IV

Description
It’s not often that we get a truly incredible re-skin of one of the base JKA models, bit u think I can safely say that this here skin can join the ranks of those few truly excellent files. There have been a few previous versions of this skin, but those were released for JK2. This is the first version to be released for JKA.

Included in this pack are not one, or two, or three, but [b]nine[/b] different skins! That makes this quite an impressive skin pack. There are five versions of the default skin, and two versions each of the team skins, which gives you plenty of choice.

The author explains a bit of the back-story for his character in his readme (I always like it when authors do that, since I think it makes reading the readme a bit more fun ;)):

[quote] And who is this Shadow-Blade? Shadow-Blade is a bounty hunter who lives his life in the shadows, he lost his friends and family to the hands of the Empire and since then he hunts for bounties, just to forget his misery. He fights with 2 orange blade sabers. Stories are told that he's been trained by the Echani, though that are only rumours.[/quote]

The skinning job here is very impressive indeed, especially since the Swamptrooper model doesn’t really allow a lot of variation on what you can do with the skin. As you may know by now, I love glowy things like magpies love shiny things, and thus I am very pleased to see some nice glowy bits on this skin! ;)

Mwahaha!

Anyway….

Personally I think the glowy visor is a nice touch, as it makes this Bounty Hunter seem a bit more menacing. In fact, the glowy visor combined with the dark plate-like armour kinda makes him look a little like a battle droid or something of the sort. He is someone you wouldn’t want to mess around with, that’s for sure! As I said above, there are five different versions of the default skin, although the problem is that they all look very similar, to the point where I couldn’t tell some of them apart without looking very closely. I think it would have been cool if there had been a bit more variation in how the different skins looked.

That said, the team skins (two versions per team) have much more noticeable variations. One version has some nice bright clean coloured areas, whilst on the other the coloured areas are scuffed and much dimmer, the result of many a battle. The way the team skins have been coloured is very good I think, the colouring isn’t too uniform or ‘in your face’ but it isn’t too subtle either, just the right balance has been struck.

As I said above though I do feel the default skins could do with some more variation in how they look. Some other improvements I think could be made are with the actual texture resolution itself, since the textures on some parts of the skin could do with being a bit sharper (around the legs especially).

All in all though excellent work, this is a skin I am most impressed with. All the more since it is a re-skin of the Swamptrooper model, a model which probably doesn’t lend itself well to original re-skins. I would definitely recommend a download here! :thumbsup:

[b]New Sounds:[/b] Yes
[b]Bot Support:[/b] Yes
[b]Team Support:[/b] Yes

~Nozyspy~